Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.

The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino, this richly illustrated and groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical.

There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.

Both from the Ears and Mind offers a bold new understanding of the intellectual and cultural position of music in Tudor and Stuart England. Linda Phyllis Austern brings to life the kinds of educated writings and debates that surrounded musical performance, and the remarkable ways in which English people understood music to inform other endeavors, from astrology and self-care to divinity and poetics. Music was considered both art and science, and discussions of music and musical terminology provided points of contact between otherwise discrete fields of human learning. This book demonstrates how knowledge of music permitted individuals to both reveal and conceal membership in specific social, intellectual, and ideological communities. Attending to materials that go beyond music’s conventional limits, these chapters probe the role of music in commonplace books, health-maintenance and marriage manuals, rhetorical and theological treatises, and mathematical dictionaries. Ultimately, Austern illustrates how music was an indispensable frame of reference that became central to the fabric of life during a time of tremendous intellectual, social, and technological change.

Charles H. Long is one of the most influential and pioneering scholars in the study of religion from the past 50 years. This is the first comprehensive collection of his writings, edited by Long himself, and contains 38 pieces, including both published and previously unpublished articles, lectures, an interview, and two book reviews. The foreword is provided by Jennifer Reid, a former student of Long. The collection is divided into four thematic parts: America and the Study of Religion; Theory and Method in the Study of Religion; African American Religion in the United States; Kindling, Embers and Sparks. Long's introduction provides much-awaited insight into his reflections on his work, expanding on questions that remained unanswered in his classic and influential text, Significations: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Images (1986). In particular, the new introductory essay explores the significance of “ellipses”, that which is omitted, the projected spaces of the Other in the study of religion. Considered the preeminent founder and advocate of the study of Black Religion, Long was exploring religion and colonialism and the importance of Afro-American religion as early as the 1960s and early 1970s, and this collection of his thinking – which moves across the formations of religious studies, African diasporic studies, and social and cultural theory – is a must-have addition for any institutional or personal library.

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy.

Thresholds of Western Culture explores identity, postcoloniality and transnationalism--three closely related issues which redefine contemporary cultural identity. The book opens with an analysis of subjectivity and the cultural meltdown that accompanied fascism in the West. The situation in Africa is then explored which, while recalling modernity's dark side, highlights the intricacy of postcolonial identity. Post-Soviet Eastern Europe presents a separate case of neglected postcoloniality which emphasizes how ethnocentrism and cultural tensions have exposed the fragility of transnationalism. The book concludes with an examination of East Asia, a region which offers transnational options potentially much more fruitful than Balkanization.

Most studies of Graeco-Roman magic focus on the Greek texts. Stimulated by important recent finds of Latin curse-tablets, this collection of essays for the first time tries to define the nature and extent of the originality of magical practice in the Latin West

In this innovative study, Horsley builds on his earlier works concerning the problematic and misleading categories of "magic" and "miracle" to examine in-depth the meaning and importance of the narratives of healing and exorcism in the Gospels. Incorporating his work on oral performance and turning to important works in medical anthropology, a new image emerges of how these narratives help us re-evaluate Jesus's place in first-century Galilee and Judea. In his exorcisms and healings, Jesus-in-interaction was empowering the villagers in their struggles for renewal of personal and communal dignity in resistance to invasive Roman rule.

The Life and Work of Ernesto de Martino introduces one of the 20th century’s key thinkers in religious studies and demonstrates that the discipline was animated by a tension between the fear of the apocalypse and the desire for civilizational rebirth.